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Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

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Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#11

Post by sbilstein »

romwell wrote: post #8

What a clickbait title. Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?). To expand on this: -$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box…

Don’t know why you are getting downvotes; these are exactly the questions any one with domain knowledge of playing electric guitars would ask.

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#12

Post by keyth72 »

sickcodebruh wrote: post #4

This is really cool, I’d love to try this out! Neural DSP, developers of what are arguably the best amp sim plugins available right now, claim that their upcoming floor modeler uses what they describe as “unique biomimetic AI technology” to create its sounds. I wonder how different their work is from this. https://neuraldsp.com/products/quad-cortex I’m personally kind of over lugging an amp around and if live music e…

Thank you! Any feedback is appreciated if you get around to trying it out.

If you look at the WaveNetVA repository from Aalto University that my plugin is based on, at least one person affiliated with that project works at Neural DSP. I suspect that the QuadCortex uses something like this (maybe a more advanced neural net) combined with other proprietary techniques and application specific hardware. They claim they can do the rig capture in 3 minutes, whereas the models I trained for the SmartAmp took a few hours on a GPU.

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#13

Post by tgv »

romwell wrote: post #8

What a clickbait title. Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?). To expand on this: -$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box…

Come on...

> (to whom?)

Objectively.

> is not description of a sound

It is, as much as "piano" is a description. People are interested in emulating hardware in their audio software, and this emulates a guitar amp, and the price tag claims "it's a decent sound".

> If this emulates a particular amp, the title should say which one

No.

> If it does a good job at emulating a particular amp, where's the side by side comparison? The video demo only shows the plug-in.

Perhaps, but the article is about getting a free plugin.

> There are plethora of guitar amp plugins. What makes this one any different or better?

Nothing per se. It's just a new one. And it's free. It's an announcement.

> What's the significance of deep learning here?

That it's an uncommon way of modeling hardware, with its own merits.

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#14

Post by sosborn »

tgv wrote: post #9
_fs wrote: post #5

I don't know, I'm not hearing the warmth of a tube amp. Sounds like other solid state emulator amps.

IANAG, but it sounds like it's recorded through a speaker in the room, and the miking wasn't optimal. Now that might be the recording we watch, or the actual output of the plugin; no way to tell. But apart from that, it's quite good, IMO. (I Am Not A Guitarist)

As a guitarist, it is important to understand that any time you tell a guitarist that the sound is digital, the guitarist will scoff and say it doesn't sound like real tube amp, regardless of what they said or thought before knowing it was digital.

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#16

Post by ysw0 »

romwell wrote: post #8

What a clickbait title. Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?). To expand on this: -$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box…

It's based on a Fender Blues Jr according to the vid. It sounds pretty good for a free plugin, but as you said there's tons of free VSTs and cheap solid state amps that can do better.

I think it sounds good for a hobby project though!

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#17

Post by keyth72 »

romwell wrote: post #8

What a clickbait title. Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?). To expand on this: -$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box…

Absolutely it's clickbait, I'm trying to get some visibility on my open source project.

To answer the question of why it's $600 specifically, it's based on a model of a Fender Blues Jr. Tweed, msrp $600. The models are evaluated to have a 1.5% error to signal ratio, meaning it's 1.5% different from the actual recorded signal, coming from an SM57 microphone.

I really do appreciate the constructive criticism, and well observed points. I'm new to promoting a project and also this Hacker News site. I'm actually floored it's getting this much attention.

The fact it uses deep learning doesn't make it better than traditionally modeled amps, but it does mean that someone with no domain experience for amp modeling (like me) can come in and make a good sounding guitar plugin.

Re: Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

#19

Post by magicalhippo »

romwell wrote: post #8

What a clickbait title. Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?). To expand on this: -$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box…

Based on the title alone, I'd expect it to emulate the sound of a specific amplifier.

Using deep learning for this makes sense, play a lot of tones and music through it, adjust the knobs, train AI to reproduce the transfer function.

If that's what they've done they should have had comparisons etc though.

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